ICv2 Interview: Greg Leeds on the Game Market and Wizard of the Coast

[Li Shenron]

I'm just skeptical it can be done short of making D&D into something akin to Descent 2.0.

DMing is always going to require a greater amount of effort unless all the work is done for you and the adventure is self-contained with rules given with each encounter. And, like I said, a 2 hour game experience has never been satisfying for me with any real RPG.

That is hasn't been satisfying for you or me is not the point. The point is that 3e and 4e are just not playable by a group of people casually picking up an adventure and trying to complete it in one night (whether it is 2 hours or 4, I think "one night" is a very appropriate rule of thumb). They want 5e to be playable like that, so that D&D can target millions of casual players. This would never jeopardize the other target, i.e. hobbyists, because it's always possible to increase the complexity of your adventures and lengths of your campaign.

To make the game playable like that, quite clearly they need:

1- character creation rules that allow to completely design a character (at least of low level) in a short time
2- easy encounter creation rules + easy DC-setting guidelines (and/or ready-to-use published adventures)
3- low character complexity so that players don't have to think too long about what to do when it's their turn
4- very simple combat rules so that an encounter can be short without being uninteresting

Points 1-2 are for starting to play quickly, and points 3-4 are for finishing to play quickly.

Currently I think they are doing well with points 1-2-4, but I am still skeptic about point 3 because characters at their lowest complexity are still quite complex just after a very few levels, they quickly gain several non-passive features to keep in mind.

 

[Wicht]

That is hasn't been satisfying for you or me is not the point. The point is that 3e and 4e are just not playable by a group of people casually picking up an adventure and trying to complete it in one night (whether it is 2 hours or 4, I think "one night" is a very appropriate rule of thumb).

Let me begin by disagreeing with you here quite strongly. I play 4 hour self contained PFRPG games every year at Cons. I have written several of them, some of which are entertaining enough (to me) that I have run them multiple years. It is quite doable using the current rules.

They still require some pre-prep on the part of the DM however; though if I had greater resources I could probably produce a product that reduced this prep time considerably.

What it requires is that the writer go into the project with the mindset of writing a satisfying self-contained adventure specifically designed to be finished in a four hour time slot. But it can be done.

There is also a big difference between the two and four hour time periods for such a thing. Two hours is simply not enough time to do it very well in the same way. You need time to allow character and story exploration, even with pregenerated characters and a tight plot. I agree "one night" is a standard play period of time, but that period of time simply cannot be only two hours long to give the same experience. It won't work as well, in my opinion.

They want 5e to be playable like that, so that D&D can target millions of casual players. This would never jeopardize the other target, i.e. hobbyists, because it's always possible to increase the complexity of your adventures and lengths of your campaign.

To make the game playable like that, quite clearly they need:

1- character creation rules that allow to completely design a character (at least of low level) in a short time
2- easy encounter creation rules + easy DC-setting guidelines (and/or ready-to-use published adventures)
3- low character complexity so that players don't have to think too long about what to do when it's their turn
4- very simple combat rules so that an encounter can be short without being uninteresting

Points 1-2 are for starting to play quickly, and points 3-4 are for finishing to play quickly.

Currently I think they are doing well with points 1-2-4, but I am still skeptic about point 3 because characters at their lowest complexity are still quite complex just after a very few levels, they quickly gain several non-passive features to keep in mind.

You are describing Descent. Which is fun, but not a satisfying RPG. Moreover, perception is reality in marketing. If your target audience perceives the basic game to be a Descent variant, or something like, then it doesn't matter if you can add complexity, that is the reputation the product will have and those looking for greater complexity will glom onto other games first. Trying to produce a game that is all things to all people is something of a fool's errand. You can do it, but you're going to have a hard time marketing and selling it well because it will never do any one thing as good as the game that focuses on a more core set of targets.

Like I said, I am skeptical. I wish them well, but think the goal is a bit of a miss from the beginning if it is truly the goal.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I cannot utilize their material in anything I might write. Nor can any of the publishers (Paizo included) use them, which mean those monsters will never see use in another 3e publication I might either write or read.

That's certainly one point of view; I disagree. Goodwill is hard to quantify economically but it does have some value.

Besides the "goodwill", what does WotC actually gain for letting you use their monsters in a Paizo book at this point in time? Does it actually help them at all?

Cause I suspect that the $30 that you and Paizo would get for the sale of an item that included WotC's MMII monsters is probably a bit more economically worthwhile to you than the "goodwill" WotC would get for letting you use it, to them.

 

[Li Shenron]

Let me begin by disagreeing with you here quite strongly. I play 4 hour self contained PFRPG games every year at Cons. I have written several of them, some of which are entertaining enough (to me) that I have run them multiple years. It is quite doable using the current rules.

They still require some pre-prep on the part of the DM however; though if I had greater resources I could probably produce a product that reduced this prep time considerably.

Apparently I have a hard time explaining my point... That you manage to run 4-hours games in 3e/4e does not surprise me at all, it happens all the time. But you are not a casual gamer, you're an expert! Heck, you're even a game designer!

My point (rather about Mearls' past articles than Leeds' interview, but anyway) was that IMHO this referring to "D&D as entertainment" is about looking for new customers by competing with other forms of entertainment, like movies or board games or videogames, and that IMHO the necessary step for that is to lower the time requirements for playing D&D so that people who normally have a "movie night" or "karaoke night" or "playstation night" with friend can consider having a "D&D night". These target people can't do that if D&D core rules require system mastery, even if experienced gamers can.

 

[Wicht]

Besides the "goodwill", what does WotC actually gain for letting you use their monsters in a Paizo book at this point in time? Does it actually help them at all?

Cause I suspect that the $30 that you and Paizo would get for the sale of an item that included WotC's MMII monsters is probably a bit more economically worthwhile to you than the "goodwill" WotC would get for letting you use it, to them.

Perhaps nothing is what they gain at this point. But if they had adopted a more open attitude towards the OGL from the get-go, I suspect that 3x would still be profitable to WotC and we wouldn't be talking about 5e. But even now, a mention in someone else's book raises awareness of the original product and WotC can still sell it as a PDF.

And, not only are you much too generous in calculating the profit of 3pps, but I have not yet officially written anything for Paizo.